


There's An Old Black Train a'Comin

by Anonymous



Category: Over the Garden Wall (Cartoon & Comics)
Genre: Its just so good, Soundtrack References, The Unknown (Over the Garden Wall), The Unknown is limbo, because how could i not, oneshots, side characters galore
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-22
Updated: 2020-10-03
Packaged: 2021-03-06 16:39:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26052022
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: The old black train hums a quiet tune as it scrapes along the iron.Usually it is lilted into a lullaby, an offering of gentle reprieve to a homesick traveler. Often it is the soft weeping of a final farewell. Once in a while, it is a maternal whisper of hope, and love, and fear.But only to the children who are left in The Unknown.(Collection of oneshots)
Comments: 5
Kudos: 11
Collections: Anonymous





	1. Miss Langtree's Lament

Miss Langtree has never minded autumn very much. The leaves have a way of falling that’s curious to her, and in a land where their lives are marked by constant descent, so too does her attention often drift toward what’s outside the schoolhouse windows. 

The mornings are the best time to observe their dance, she discovers. 

It’s easy enough to watch the brittle fall leaves be plucked from spindly fingers, to see how they splay across the forest floor and tremble gently under a breeze. 

There is a familiar pattern to it all – a little over a second to one side, a dash less as it swings the other way, then a swooping zigzag that twirls as if being funnelled by an invisible cone. They land as butterflies do when they stop to sip a modicum of nectar before being rushed away by their own fleeting nature; the wind carries them away with perpetual, unchanging serendipity. 

The Unknown, Miss Langtree has discovered, tends to shape itself around its inhabitants rather than the other way around. Why else, she thinks, does it play a fiddle with her when she sings? There are no fiddlers near the schoolhouse besides the animals she teaches herself. 

She supposes that if the leaves were to stay on the forest bed any longer than a moment, they would pile higher and higher into a giant mound, and that’s why the breeze decides to come pick them up. 

But as every day she steps under the dawn’s cautious light, she finds herself wishing that the Unknown would be a little more callous that day. In the crook of her arm she carries a thick, leather-bound book that makes her lean over to one side due to its weight. 

The paper is patterned with swirling lines of cursive. _“ABCD…”_ On it goes, the same series of curls and dashes– a lesson she never tires of teaching and one that the animals never remember learning. Between its covers are the days, weeks, lifetimes she has spent in the Unknown. On each page rests a perfect autumn leaf. 

In the morning sun, Miss Langtree searches for another one to slip into the next blank page. And just as she reaches out her hand in selection, she hears it. _It's like clockwork,_ she thinks, but lets her attention be diverted anyways. 

The faint tone of a train echoes through the wind. It hums and clicks in a familiar pattern, and between the whistles there are voices too. They call to her in gentle, beckoning harmony. 

Like a river leaking through a nest of branches, she begins to remember–the apple, the worm, the old black train that plucked her from her mortal branches and brought her to the Unknown, and the oft-opened suitcase beneath the staircase. 

She drops her book and stands up hastily, eyeing the curve of the sun and hoping that there is still time. Just barely. 

She rushes to the stairwell so quickly she thinks she has beaten the wind itself, and with a thumping heart and a desperation for something entirely unknown to her, Miss Langtree wraps her hand around the handle of the suitcase. She barely picks it up before a clamoring crash shakes the air and causes her to freeze.

The sun climbs higher in the sky while the whistling of home sinks away. Whether the young animals have arrived for school or the Unknown has caught on, it is too late. 

Her tears are already dry on her cheeks when the trombones, clarinets and cymbals cheer jubilantly over the final dying chugs of the train. Slowly, and with a mourning kind of softness, she sets the suitcase back down. 

_Perhaps tomorrow,_ she promises to herself before heading back inside to teach her lessons. The schoolhouse greets her with open doors, and the whispers of the forest speak their approval. 

Later, after she has sung and the school day is coming to an end, she looks out the window and catches the falling of a leaf. It twirls and dances in the wind, its edges lined with gold from the falling sun. 

_How curious,_ she thinks as she watches the tip of the leaf dip below the window frame, _that when I find the perfect leaf, I never see where it lands._

The next morning she is outside again with her book in the crook of her arm and the image of a glowing leaf in her mind, falling and twisting in a swirl of gold and never, ever, touching the ground.


	2. The Fisher Fish

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Fisher Fish does not hunt like the Beast, but prefers to lie in wait– to judge the moment right.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You know that fish that shows up in the last episode and when Beatrice saves Wirt? Dude's cool.

The Fisher Fish waits at the end of the Unknown. He dwells in the pooling of a thousand rivulets, the coldest winter night. His scales lie in dull plates, and his eyes, so still as to seem frozen, rest above a gaping mouth. 

To see him is to be dead twice-over. Well, nearly. He does not hunt like the Beast, but prefers to lie in wait– to judge the moment right. For the traveler who still has someone who cares enough to save them, the Fisher will cast his flax net into the lake, and together they will pull them out. The traveler will cough and shake and breathe, and often, they will hear the faint whistling of a distant train. The winter will melt back into fall.   
The rest are not so lucky. 

Through a sheet of biting hail, and with boots filled with slushy snow, a resigned wanderer comes upon a lake. It is small, with little island patches and tree roots stuck up like gnarled fingers. It looks shallow at first, but upon closer inspection, the water is solid black, as if every ray of light is being sucked into it. 

The wanderer finds a small patch of snow just inches above the lake and sits down against a rotting tree. With fingers rubbery from the cold, she unties the laces of her soaked leather boots and carefully twists them off. She sets them beside her and rests her feet in the snow. Something black and shiny crawls onto one of them. Her eyes almost close. 

The wind and storms disappear, and the air falls into deadly silence. From beneath snow-clung eyelashes, the wanderer sees something in the center of her vision. A wooden boat. Dull-metal scales. An eye with a vast emptiness that pierces deep inside of her. She watches as it approaches, cutting through the lake like a knife through fabric, and when it reaches her island she can see that it makes no reflection on the water’s surface. 

The boat stops suddenly, its tip just reaching over the snow. There’s a moment of stillness where the wanderer looks on and wonders if it is a smile lining her reaper’s face, or an expression of gasping hunger. She ponders it still as a wave of small, black turtles crawl onto her legs, her arms, her face, before slowly dragging her into the water. Her face is submerged, and the question is never answered.

A world away, the train blows its horn furiously, five, six, times in rapid succession before falling into mournful silence. 

The Fisher Fish sighs.   
From his worn-down wooden boat, he casts a reel and waits.

**Author's Note:**

> side characters very cool


End file.
